This gambling movie was actually released before the seminal God of Gamblers, and in many ways in takes a quite different approach to the genre. It's closer in spirit to the gritty, violent gangster movies that were so popular in the late Eighties, and while we do have a big showdown at the gambling table (complete with a bit twist revealed in the final hand) finishing the movie, there's little gambling going on in the preceding 2 hrs.

The story is about 2 friends called Sam (Alan Tam) and Crab Chan (Andy Lau), who make their living with professional gambling. At the request of a friend, they travel to a US casino in Lake Tahoe to help put an end to a gambling scheme that is costing the casino loads of money. The trip proves fateful in many ways: By helping the casino, they make mortal enemies of some Japanese Yakuza gamblers. At the same time, Sam falls for rich HK socialite Idy Chan, and decides to become an honest citizen. Idy's father offers him a career in his company, and soon Sam is climbing the corporate ladder and enjoying marital bliss with rich girl Idy, while the somewhat more bluecollar Crab is stuck with big-eyed floozy Rosamund Kwan and with a failed gambling career after his hand is injured during an assassination attempt.

Of course the Yakuza guys won't stop until Sam and Crab are dead, and it's here that the film takes a turn towards heavy melodrama coupled with lots of gunplay. Several central characters meet an untimely, bloody end and Sam has no choice but to take on the Japanese in a final, decisive high-stakes gambling duel. He does so in classic fashion, with everything on the line, and the final match is indeed quite gripping with a surprising end.

The film suffers from the fact that Alan Tam is not a very charismatic actor, and one would have wished that Andy Lau had been given more screentime and Alan less. All in all, it's a rather average movie with some pretty dull stretches that is salvaged only by the pretty decent showdown at the end. Marginal recommendation.